Monday, October 19, 2009

It was one of those bad experiences I was laughing at before it was even over, like the slo-mo sidewalk dive I took in France in front of a bus full of French people.

To begin with I want to make one thing clear, I NEVER drive with the windows down. Never. I do not enjoy the wind whipping my hair in my eyes as I drive, or smelling other people emission problems, or hearing what crap they’re listening to on their car stereo (or conversely have them hear what I’m listening to on mine, my mp3 rotation may include such artists as the BeeGees, Air Supply, and whoever sings LaBamba and I don’t want to be judged.)

I must have been in some sort of earth goddess, let me feel the breeze on my skin mood driving back from Target on Friday when I turned to Danny and said, “Do you mind if I roll the windows down? The air outside seems nice.” I did roll them down and felt one gust of cool air on my neck. I also felt two fat raindrops so I went to roll the window back up again, except it was stuck. It started raining harder, and all the window would do is make angry little clicking sounds.

I kept pressing the window button. It started raining even harder, so hard I could barely see the front of the car. The world went from grey to typhoon in fifteen seconds flat. And right at the very moment I chose to roll my window down to enjoy the breeze. Water was pounding my face and soaking my entire left side while I tried to navigate down 34th street.

Danny dumped out the contents of the plastic Target bag (anti-aging eye cream and Count Chocula). “Here,” he said, “will this help?”

I held the bag up to the opening in the window with my left hand and steered with my right. The bag did act as a shield to keep water from pouring into my eyeballs so I could better concentrate on driving. The only downside was that it kept filling with water and dumping it onto my leg like a garden waterfall. My leather bucket seat was also collecting water like a rain barrel until I was sitting in a small pool.

Danny laughed from the dry passenger side. "Only me," I said as I readjusted the Target bag, dumping a fresh load of rainwater onto my lap. "The minute I try to enjoy the air. I hope whoever controls the universe is having a nice big laugh right now."

The worst part of the whole ordeal was that we were going to go hang gliding the next day, but didn’t on the off chance we’d have to drive down the turnpike for two hours in the storm of the century. I blame the breeze. If it weren’t for that, I never would have wanted the windows down, it wouldn’t have broken and I could have soared like a bird 3,000 feet above the earth, forgetting about orphanages, malnutrition, and the fact that we haven't been to Russia yet.

Instead of flying like a bird, I organized a closet on Saturday. At home. With the windows closed. The air was pretty nice.